Matinee Video Window captures cursor and can't be closed

Development Programming & Scripting
1

When using Matinee to render a video, render window steals mouse for scene navigation. You cant quit window by clicking closer and it also doesnt respond to ESC. Thats a very bad user frustrating behaviour not expected in modern applications.

EDIT Information about this issue pulled from forum post listed below:

"Sorry, but I have bad user interface experience with render process.

These are steps I took with example RealisticRendering:

  • Open Matinee window.
  • Click movie icon to generate video
    Dialog Movie Options opens…
  • Click OK for default settings
    a second U icon will be displayed in dock, representing
    render window.

No progress bar is shown or any hint whats happening.

  • Click on second U icon on dock.
    This opens render window, showing first frame and no progress of
    rendering.

Unfortunately, this steals mouse, so user interface is blocked until you
bring another application to foreground.

You dont see, if anything is rendering. If you locate generated video file under
/Users/(your_name)/Documents/Unreal\ Projects/RealisticRendering/Saved/VideoCaptures/VMRoom_MatineeActor_3_30fps_320x240_0.avi
you will see a file size of 0, after a while a file size of > 1.0 GB, so this seems
to render unlimited, without an end mark, and not only matinee track range.

Now I try to stop, as suggested by on answerhub:
“To quit out of matinee render, use tilde key (~) then type quit and hit enter. Have a great day!”

With render window in foreground I push tilde key, nothing happens,
I blindly type “quit” and hit enter, wondering, because Im not in a command interface.
Nothing happens.

By switching between apps with CMD TAB, I get mouse back and close render
window.

Clicking on generated AVI file will open Quicktime and start a converting process.
movie consists only of repeated first frame, no camera path through scene.

So, is there anybody who can show me, how to render a sequence with
just selected range on OSX?

Thank you for helping."

2

Hi ,

To quit out of matinee render, use tilde key (~) then type quit and hit enter. Have a great day!

3

Thank you, this doesnt work for me, am I supposed to use a command window?

Repeated my question on forum:

4

Hi ,

Can you provide me with reproduction steps so I can better assess what may be going on. What steps are you taking to get to point that you cannot exit matinee render window. Please also post your dxdiag. Thank you and have a great day!

5

Exact steps are here, thats why I added link.

6

What is dxdiag on Mac?

7

And have a great day!

8

Hi ,

On a mac you just go to apple icon and find About this mac, then select more info. We need OS version, Graphics card, Drivers, RAM, Hard drive size, and Processor along with any other information you feel may be helpful. Thank you!

9

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac13,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3.4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 24 GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x11a2
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 3707
Displays:
iMac:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 2560 x 1440
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Built-In: Yes

10

I have copied System-Info. Please give me name of source-code file, where I can find stop render command as you gave me:
"use tilde key (~) then type quit and hit enter. ".
I will also look for a workaround in code.

11

Hey ,

Thanks for that information. It sounds like there may be two issues here, and I wasn’t immediately able to reproduce them so I may have additional questions.

First, just to be clear: when you have render window open and it has focus, hitting tilde key, by itself with no modifier key held, should open a small console line at bottom of render window. Hitting it again should make that fill more of window, and hitting it a third time should remove it. While it is open, you should have keyboard control in that window and be able to type console commands, such as “quit” as recommended.

Is that not working for you?

If you CMD-Tab out and regain mouse control, does second UE4Editor icon in your Dock indicate that it is running? Or does it say application is not responding and give you option to Force Quit?

Sorry for all questions, but we really want to get to bottom of this for you. Thanks!

12

,
clicking movie icon will start render window, but it initially will be docked. When I click icon in dock, it will open without mouse access.

I can choose another app with CMD TAB and click mouse on that other app, this will regain mouse control. Switching back to render window allows me then to close window with mouse.

To hit a tilde, I push ALT-N combination on Mac. There is no console, looks like key is ignored.
Force Quit is not necessary, process is working properly.

13

simplest workaround here, might be to just stop rendering, when matinee time has reached end and close render window automatically.

Is there an event for matinee render end? Then we could do this ourself with a blueprint.

14
  1. movie window opens under editor in OSX, and that’s a known issue we’re looking into. I’m going to enter another report for losing mouse cursor because that’s not consistent with PC version.
  2. normal tilde command of ALT-N isn’t what you need to press to access console. tilde key on your keyboard, without any mod keys, will open it. It’s fine if you didn’t need it, I just wanted to make sure it was functioning for you.
  3. movie window is recording through appropriate camera, but does not stop recording once your cinematic is finished. That’s why it gets larger if you leave it running longer. You can always edit resulting .avi file in external video editing software; we’re really just recording what’s running through main camera for you. There is not currently any control over movie recorder through blueprints.

Other than those three items, was there any other problems you were experiencing with recording through Matinee?

15

Thank you. Just wanted to say, that my Mac keyboard has no tilde key, only ALT-N. To ensure proper cross-platform functions you should consider other shortcuts.

Please answer my question where I asked for related source code. Im willing to invest some time to code better video handling. Especially I need a mov container and other codecs.

16

Hm, that is interesting. I’ll go ahead and enter a report for that, maybe see if we can get that into keyboard shortcuts so you can apply ALT-N to it. Would you mind attaching a picture of your type of keyboard so I can include it?

I’ll see if I can get someone to answer your question about where to look in source for video handling.

17

keyboard is this one: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Apple-Wireless-Keyboard-German.png

I think UK version also has no tilde. Thank you.

18

At a low level, AMatineeActor::Stop will be called when matinee is done playing. This is then followed by AMatineeActor::TermInterp to clean up cinematic. In a level blueprint you with a matinee actor selected right click and you should get an option to add a MatineeController. There will be a pin called “Finish” which will be called when matinee is done playing. You can hook up your own custom functionality through there if you want.

19

I found it myself, it is in
void UEditorEngine::StartQueuedPlayMapRequest()
{
…
else if (bStartMovieCapture)
{
// @todo Fix for UE4. This is a temp workaround.
PlayForMovieCapture();
}
…
}

20

Glad you were able to find that! Did you also see 's reply from 2 days ago? Seems like he found a possible Blueprint solution for you as well.